Thursday, October 21, 2004

Explaining bad faith

Here's one of the questions conservatives sometimes ask themselves: why do liberals refuse to engage conservatives on matters of substance?

Whenever the conservative voice is heard in some way, liberals rarely reply in terms of a measured argument. This is despite the fact that there are hundreds of professional liberal academics and journalists who could be called on to put the liberal case.

Instead, liberals usually try to dismiss the conservative position as reflecting some temporary hardship in the general population or as being an illegitimate expression of fear or hostility or prejudice.

Lawrence Auster has a short and persuasive explanation for such liberal behaviour at View from the Right. I think it does provide at least part of the reason for the liberal failure to argue reasonably against conservatism.